The Basketball Game
by Zip Goes A Million
Summary: Modern AU one-shot. Mostly fluff. Tom has been eyeing up Sybil for a while. When they are both in the audience at the basketball game, he finally gets up the guts to ask her out.


**The Basketball Game**

Tom sat with Elsie and Thomas, colleagues from work. He'd noticed that in the row behind him was Sybil – someone he'd been looking at for a while, but hadn't told her what he felt yet. Thomas had noticed that he was giving her a lot of attention, but Tom always made up some stupid excuse as to why he always stared at her, but it did nothing to fool Thomas. But Tom thought that she had never even glanced at him, let alone thought about him the same way. He and his work colleagues were watching the game because their company had managed to get hold of a few free tickets and there were a group of them that could never pass up the opportunity to see a basketball game for free. Unfortunately for Tom he couldn't concentrate on the game at all because he couldn't take his eyes off the gorgeous woman in the row behind him who often came by the office for various different reasons.

"Tom," Thomas said over Elsie's head. "We can shoot now." He was referring to the free shots that they had been offered to take at half time from half-court.

"But," Tom started. He knew that he'd got the free shot, but he'd completely forgotten about it. Thomas didn't let him get any further in his sentence.

"Tom, you've been gawping at that poor girl since she walked in. You haven't seen any of the game because you haven't been able to take your eyes off her. Seriously, concentrating on basketball for ten minutes will not do you any harm at all." Tom wasn't about to argue with Thomas, so they both walked to the centre of the courts where they were handed a basketball each and were told that they had three shots each. They decided to take it in turns – first Thomas would take a shot, then Tom. Thomas was good at most sports. He lined up carefully and used force from his knees and a flick of his wrists to send the ball flying through the air, making it bounce off the backboard and fall through the netted hoop. He had a smug grin on his face and caught the ball as it was thrown back to him by one of the team players. Tom stood exactly where Thomas had been standing. He wasn't exactly 'good' at sports, but at school shooting was always his strong point. When he was about fifteen he could get a few balls in the basket in a row from the opposite end of the court and from a wide range of weird angles and distances, but he hadn't played for years and now he was extremely aware that there was a gorgeous girl with wavy dark hair, red lipstick and a practically perfect figure who was almost certainly watching him, wondering whether he'd be able to make the basket with an equal amount of skill to his friend. _Come on Tom. Don't mess this up._ Tom eyed up the basket and took the shot. It bounced off the backboard at an angle and hit the rim of the hoop. It rolled around the edge once and then fell, but on the wrong side for it to score. _Crap._ Thomas used his skill again, but used a little too much force, which caused it to bounce off the board too far so that it missed the hoop. "Damn it!" Thomas said under his breath. Tom knew that he only had two shots left. He had to be able to get these two – that would prove to Sybil that he was a good sportsman, even though he knew that Thomas was far better than he was. He bounced the ball a few times in front of him and lined up the ball with the net. He bent his knees and his elbows and jumped up a bit to give the ball its power. This time it rebounded straight off the ring. _Are you kidding me?_ Tom looked down to his feet, knowing that he only had one shot left to impress his gorgeous crush. He caught the ball and held it in one hand, watching Thomas take his final shot. He was trying desperately not to look at Sybil, due to embarrassment. He had no idea whether she liked sportsmen or not, but he thought that it couldn't hurt to show off a bit. The only problem was that he was showing off rather badly. Thomas was doing a much better job of it. Thomas' final shot went in completely cleanly – it touched neither the board, nor the rim of the net and everybody applauded him. Tom had one shot left. One shot to make himself look good. _Don't mess this up, don't mess this up! You want her to think you're cool!_ Tom stood with his feet apart and twisted the ball in his hands. He focused on the basket and propelled the ball through the air. He watched the ball bounce off the plastic board and fall straight through the middle of the hoop. He leapt a small way into the air and smiled to himself. He then caught Sybil's eye and flushed a deep shade of pink. He looked away and celebrated with Thomas.

At the end of a close and exciting game, he and his friends from work stood up to leave the building. As he walked out of the building he saw Sybil and her red-headed best friend laughing and giggling in the cold night air. He quickly said goodbye to those he had come to the game with, and began walking over to the two women. He had a sudden surge of courage, knowing that he had nothing to lose. He never had this much nerve, but he was feeling brave at this moment. As he got closer to them, they turned around and looked at him. Both women were smiling widely. "Hi," Sybil said to him. Gwen stood to one side slightly and stayed silent.

"Hi, umm, look, I think you're absolutely gorgeous – completely stunning – and I was wondering whether I could take you on a date at some point?" he asked boldly. He stood waiting for her reply. Sybil looked down at the dark floor between them.

"I'd love to go on a date with you," Sybil said, locking her eyes with his. She searched around in her bag for some paper and a pen. She wrote her name, her phone number and her e-mail address. "There are my contact details. I'll wait for you to organise it, shall I?" she asked, with a wide grin on her face.

"A little risky! But I'll do my best," Tom said earnestly.

"Cool," Sybil said. "I'll see you then!" She turned to walk away, back towards Gwen. Suddenly she turned back to Tom and said, "You're ridiculously handsome by the way! That shirt shows off the best bits!" She turned back to Gwen and strode off, chatting to her friend the whole way. Tom grinned down at the piece of paper in his hand and made his own way home, giddy with excitement.

* * *

_I wrote this ages ago, and posted it on Tumblr. It was originally done as a response to some photos of Allen, Rob, Phyllis and I think Laura (Tom, Thomas, Mrs. Hughes and Edith) at a basketball game, so I wrote this as a bit of fluff and was going through my fanfiction stuff today and realised that I hadn't actually posted it on Tumblr. I hope you liked it. Please review if you did._


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